Grim metal bedlam and compatibility with Mork Borg.

-




 I have watched the vast majority of Trent (Miscast!) Holbrook’s hobby vlogs and have recently reread John Blanche’s biography the rise of grim dark published by wombat press.


My mind is obsessed with little toy soldiers I don’t fully understand why but I have a deep fascination with the little chunks of metal  and plastic multi part kits that make up the hobby.


 I been working on building a box 40k kill team of Corsair Voidscarred. While they are not on my priority list of troops to paint this year… (Halcyon miniature’s are my top priority)! 


Halcyon (while completely unaffiliated with me or any of my projects) I personally consider them perfect proxies for the Grim Metal Bedlam setting and games. They are my favorite miniature sculpture with black crab miniatures being the only real competition in my heart and maybe some of the conversions made in the Inq28 style .



The approach I am taking with the game of Grim Metal Bedlam is that of approaching on a single planet (one world was enough for all of human history and I see no reason to make this particular game anything but a key hole to a setting I already have 5 novellas in and some odd short stories. A kind of way of exploring the visual identity of those stories and trying to understand what makes it more than a vanity project…


Speaking of which Trent Holbrook was talking about making arcane ugly compatible with mork Borg…. I thought about it and mork Borg is one of my favorite games and was an inspiration on me trying to make the book I been working a rpg system and a Freeform skirmish game. I ave never play forbidden psalm but… my favorite game is kill. Sample. Process. So it is not that far a leap for me to decide to make Grim Metal Bedlam compatable with both mork Borg and kill sample process. So that is what I am working on.


What made despise to throw out a fairly novel dice system I have been working on for nearly five years while developing the system?


1 The most interesting part of the game to me was the setting, it is designed to be a toy box for my brain, and I can easily transpose that setting to the mork Borg family of games.


2 the madness dice system as originally designed and released as the zine esper troopers I release a year or so ago is fine for competing games but narrative solos play just didn’t work well as orignally designed. 


3 it is a ego driven mistake to assume I can do everything as well as the best people in there fields. And I like mork borg’s rules particularly the variant used in skirmish games like forbidden psalm and kill sample process, I think there is no reason to reinvent the wheel.


4 a variant of madness is being developed as an optional rule for the mork Borg compatible addition a kind of a eccentric setting specific way dealing esper powers. So really I couldn’t think of a reason to not do it.


Hoping to have a version out by the end of the year after I play test more next month.


The city of Grim Metal Bedlam is a Science fantasy setting inspired by Tsutomo Nihei and John Blanche. It is planet covering city infested by bio punk monsters and degenerate zombies born from several bio weapons (the ghoul virus among other things) released on the planet of over twenty billion people.   It was so densely packed before the virus was released on the population whole generation could pass without them ever seeing natural sky. Now the planet has been quarantined for nearly a century and devolving into near medieval levels of culture with gangs warring for the little remaining resources and doing their best to avoid being devoured by the undead.


Older versions of the game zines are on itch under Drew Freak.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

When things go profoundly wrong.

-
  “Do you know how many times you texted me?” “I’m sorry I have paranoid schizophrenia and I am trying to learn how to socialize. I apologize and I will never contact you again.” And I didn’t ever contact that person again. I don’t know who she was and it was well over ten years ago when I Was in the early stages of recovering from a sustained psychosis. I have just paraphrased from memory the text she sent before I blocked her on a dating site. How many times did I text her? like thirty or forty over a period of six months. So why? This is going to be hard to explain for someone who has had a normal life. The answer is simple I didn’t know what would happen. I didn’t understand that not responding once is a hard fast rule for when to disappear from a closing door and that maybe if you swallow your pride a second message reaching out before closing a door. I have paranoid schizophrenia and been through some fairly traumatic stuff in my time. Some real… and others so sub...
Read more

5th grade guitar skillz

-
  Mason Andrew Freak (or simply Drew) sat in his empty room without posters, without toys, basically empty except for a bed. Though he was not sitting on the bed he was in his closet (a metaphor [possibly!]) crying over the warhammer 2nd edition of the chador codex crying…. He had taken down all of his posters of Digimon adventure, dragon ball z,   and ff7. He was twelve years old and almost four hundred pounds, he wasn’t even sure he could get out of the closet he was sitting in. He would turn on his flashlight and stare at john Blanche art and dream such horrific beautiful rock n roll dreams! Trying to escape the reality that was the last time he left his parent’s house. A friend of his dad said “are you single my daughter just broke up with her boyfriend.” The daughter “He is half my age and twice my size.” So little mason went home and tore down all his posters and dreamed beautiful dark dreams. Not knowing he would eventually write over a thousand songs about the th...
Read more

On subjectivity and doubt.

-
  When faced with artificial rhetoric pushing false narratives the educated mind is inclined towards doubt. The uneducated mind more towards confidence, for it has now been told what it has waited for. That it is indeed the protagonist of a plot against the grand machinations of history and will uproot the status quo of progressive wild behavior like Wearig a baseball cap backwards and not being filled with inferiority and guilt when a drunken chef in from the army gets angry when you don’t take it off during the national anthem (this may be very specific haha). When you can’t tell when’s video is AI generated or not… things become dangerous because of the choice of the ignorant to be encouraged by “look out for your own interests” and “not sink the life boat” we need to take serious  ether the lack of media education in being able to discern facts from “ alternative facts ”. Because when these alternative (false beliefs)  are held as viable and objective. What we...
Read more